Somewhere in southern Sri Lanka, after a few hours of walking along roads up from Galle coast to the Sinharaja Rainforest, I stopped at a tiny roadside shop to quench my thirst. Before I could even ask, the owner insisted I sit down and he handed me a freshly cut opened coconut, offering it to me with a broad, welcoming smile.
Whilst trekking near Hatton, at the bottom of Adam’s Peak, I met a group of women who worked as field workers for the Women’s Development Centre in Kandy. They wanted to walk with me for a bit in solidarity with my fundraising and awareness‑raising trek. We communicated as best we could – they with little English and me with no Tamil or Sinhalese, but we still found a connection. They were working hard to empower women in their rural communities, and I was raising funds to help them continue that work.
These were just two of countless moments that reminded me how different a country feels when you experience it slowly, on foot, and outside the usual tourist routes.
As I was trekking across Sri Lanka, I realised something uncomfortable about modern tourism: many of us see a country without ever truly connecting with it. I’ve done this myself many times on my travels abroad over the past few decades. In Sri Lanka it’s easy to experience the country only through hotel windows and curated excursions, especially as tourists don’t tend to hire cars there themselves. The beaches, viewpoints and popular landmarks are undeniably beautiful, but they tell only a small part of the story. Walking from the south to the north of the country exposed me to versions of Sri Lanka that many tourists never encounter, for example, extremely remote villages, tea and coffee plantation communities, small family‑run guesthouses where I could have conversations with people whose lives are deeply connected to the land around them.
Walking, of course, forced me to slow down. I noticed the smell of cut cinnamon as I passed men scraping the bark off a cinnamon tree in tiny garage‑like ‘factories’ on quiet back roads. I fully experienced the rapturous morning birdsong, the sound of temple bells, and the bread van whose jingle took me straight back to my 1970s ice‑cream van childhood. Children waved from village roads as we passed shoulder to shoulder on their way to school, often stopping for a moment to say hello or, more often, “Suba udasanak”. I realised that it was in Sri Lanka that I stopped ticking off a destination and instead began participating in it.
What struck me most was the warmth, generosity and strong sense of community I found in places that rarely appear in travel brochures. I went down gem mines, visited elder homes, and was invited into people’s family homes and to join in with their community activities. Again and again, strangers offered directions, tea, food, or simple curiosity about where I’d come from, where I was heading next, and why on earth I was walking in the blazing heat. Those interactions became far more memorable than any carefully planned itinerary from a tourist information centre or travel agent.
But walking such long distances also revealed the inequalities beneath Sri Lanka’s tourism industry. In some areas, luxury hotels and tourist hotspots sit only a short distance from communities facing extreme economic hardship. As a result, I’ve begun to think more critically about where tourist money actually goes, who benefits, and how we as travellers can make more conscious choices about where to stay, what to do and how to travel around. Tourism can absolutely support local communities when done responsibly. Staying in family‑run guesthouses, hiring local guides, using public transport, eating at independently run places and buying directly from local businesses all help create a more meaningful exchange between visitors and the people who call this country home. I’ve come to realise that each of our small decisions matters far more than I once thought.
I also found myself reflecting on how social media has changed the way we travel. So many travellers now move quickly from one ‘must‑see’ location to another, focusing on capturing the perfect photo before moving on – Horton Plains, Sigiriya Rock, Dambulla Caves, Ella Rock, for example. I’ve done it. Yet the moments that stayed with me were rarely the photogenic ones. They were the conversations I had whilst walking, stumbling upon an elder home on a large tea plantation and being welcomed in, the unexpected genuine smiles from children walking 5 kilometres or more each way to school, and the unplanned encounters that can’t easily be captured or shared on social media.
Perhaps the greatest lesson I learnt isn’t about how many places I visit, but how deeply I allow myself to notice them.
Walking across Sri Lanka changed the way I think about tourism not only because I discovered hidden destinations, but because I learned the value of slowing down for long enough to spend some quality time with the people living in them.
If you’d like to hear more about my experiences in Sri Lanka, you can get a copy of my book Trekking Sri Lanka: More Than a Travel Guide from Amazon or via the Buy It Now button on this site, with profits from all sales going back into supporting local communities in Sri Lanka.